Raw Voting Data Now Available (ie da Feedback)

Ingemar Ragnemalm (Co-Author of da "Tricks" book)
An impressive lineup, with many good games. Some would be good shareware titles, and some promise great future titles from the same author. I have an urge to submit something myself some day... a nice way to promote Mac games. Great contest!
Comments: Most of it seems really good. What could be better? Not too much. I would like the ""polish"" part to put some more emphasis on the general feeling of "finished game", and re-warding games that help the player figuring the games out. Some were very good at this, others required the user to quit and read the manual first. At least one game could not be downloaded at all (BumperCars) and a few did not work. Couldn't at least the broken download be found and reported? (Editor's Note: We did our best with Bumper Car)

Ian Lynch Smith (Freeverse)
Best thing to happen to Mac game development since support for the 2 button mouse!

Glenda Adams (Aspyr Media)
Very high quality entries this year! I especially liked the variety of different game types and originality. Several with exceptional polish as well.

Michael S. Austin (CTSP Games)
Seems like the entries have overall improved this year. Great Job on all parts! I was asked to vote on polish, and to me, that is a start to finish impression of the game. The game should be easy to use and intuitive, as well as pleasing to the senses. Always take time to fix the small details! They are the ones that make an average game great.
Great job, Carlos and all others involved. Truly, this contest is motivating and drawing new people into our industry. Judging by the turnout and quality of some of the entries in this years contest, you are having a great effect on the future of gaming! Congratulations!

Sam Lantinga (Blizzard)
I am very impressed with the quality of games in general. There were many interesting and fun entries. It would have been nice to have some way to note which games I was not able to run. For those games I resorted to checking screenshots and evaluating the packaging. (Editor's Note: Sam Judges early and before instructions were given on how to deal with games that would not run)

Nathan Lamont (Bigger Planet)
I couldn't find Bumper Cars to download. Splock had no sound. Thunderblast had technical difficulties and so was difficult to judge. I attempted to judge on "polish" alone, which to me means presentation and seamlessness, disregarding all other qualities. Thus I tended to be more forgiving of lower quality art if it was presented and used well. Thanks for inviting me to judge.

George Warner (Apple)
Solor Quest was the only game I gave a 5. Kill Dr. Cote & BugThug were excellent also. I judge games on: art, controls, difficulity (balance), documentation, fun, GUI, originality, physics, replayability, sound (& music), story and "extras" on a scale of 0-9.

Aaron Fothergill (One of the Unusual Suspects)
The quality of entry is getting better each year. Some very nicely put together games this year, and there are some games that have a great future potential.

I should mention two other points... Some judges didn't leave a remark -- in case you were wondering.

Also, I approached a "good number" of people who I felt were qualified to be judges due to their activities in the Mac game market. A good deal of them turned me down for lack of time. In many cases, I'm sure that was the reason, and yet in some cases, I could feel "the brush off. " I am too professional to say who we should give our Grinch Awards to, but I raise this point because the people in the list above, are the ones that REALLY care about this community, Mac games, and what we are doing IMHO. Think about it.

PowerMacX Wrote:Note: For the 2D vs 3D charts, I assumed that BumperCars was 2D, but I never played it, so if it actually was 3D I'll have to update that chart.

...

New charts: Gamer Type vs. Age, Number of Votes by Age and 2D Games vs. 3D Games.

BumperCars was 2D.

The stats I'm finding particularly interesting are the average Audio scores for 2D vs 3D games. Is this because of a tendency for the teams behind 3D games to also put more effort into the music, or is there a tendency for voters impressed with a game to vote it higher in all categories?

The stats I'm finding particularly interesting are the average Audio scores for 2D vs 3D games. Is this because of a tendency for the teams behind 3D games to also put more effort into the music, or is there a tendency for voters impressed with a game to vote it higher in all categories?

Or does having 3D graphics truly make the music sound better?

If you look at the last table, Correlation (when grouped by game), you may notice that the biggest correlation is between Audio & Graphics (0.94937). This may be an indication of people trying to rate the game high "overall", and not having it as a separate choice leaving them no other way than just giving it good scores in the available public categories. Of course, there where many games with good music & graphics, but other than your "3D graphics making the music sound better" or "3D teams putting more effort into the music" theories I can't find a better explanation for the 2D vs. 3D scores.
Once I get the Polish scores with a bit more precision (more than 2 decimals) I'll add them to the correlation table too. Also, please note that the Peer categories' scores I used didn't include self-votes, but the official results seem to.